CONDITIONS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF CLINES

Abstract

A very general partial differential equation in space and time satisfied by the gene frequency in a monoecious population distributed continuously over an arbitrary habitat is derived. The treatment is restricted to a single diallelic locus in the absence of mutation and random drift, and it is supposed that time is continuous, births and deaths occur at random, and migration is independent of genotype. With the further assumptions that migration is isotropic and homogeneous, the population density is constant and uniform (as permitted by the population regulation mechanism included in the formulation), and Hardy-Weinberg proportions obtain locally, this partial differential equation reduces to the simplest multidimensional generalization of the classical Fisher-Haldane cline model. The efficacy of migration and selection in maintaining genetic variability at equilibrium in this model is investigated by deducing conditions for the existence of clines under various circumstances. The effects of the degree of dominance, a neutral belt between the regions where a particular allele is advantageous and deleterious, finiteness of the habitat, and habitat dimensionality are evaluated. Provided at least one of the alleles is favored only in a finite region, excluding the special case in which its total effective selective coefficient is zero, if conditions for supporting a cline are too unfavorable because migration is too strong, selection is too weak, or both, a cline cannot exist at all. Thus, unless there is overdominance, the population must be monomorphic. It is possible for a cline which can barely exist under the prevailing ecological circumstances to show a large amount of variation in gene frequency